


Hoarder

by Silent_Wolf



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Gen, Hoarding, Male-Female Friendship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-30
Updated: 2015-06-30
Packaged: 2018-04-06 23:27:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4240722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silent_Wolf/pseuds/Silent_Wolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lydia is amused, annoyed and shocked by her Thane's hoarding. He collects everything from clothes to jewels to food to... other things she isn't even sure how to categorize. She isn't sure why he does it, but she does know it's a problem. Now, how to fix it..?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hoarder

**Author's Note:**

> Warning(s): Unbeta'd, probably full of grammatical mistakes and sentence fails. (I did both read, and re-read it, but there's usually something that manages to stay behind anyway. So please forgive and notify me if you notices any mistakes. Oh, and I'm relatively new to writing fic, so please forgive any other mistakes and/or general horridness. Thank you.
> 
> Author's Note: This is set a few years after my other stories, (obviously) but it can easily be read as a stand-alone. No other fics needed to understand this one.
> 
> Reviews are greatly appreciated, constructive criticism even more so.
> 
> Flames will be used to grill marshmallows. Maybe sausages if there's enough of them.
> 
> Disclaimer: I own nothing except from the story itself, which is, again, only a fidget of my imagination.
> 
> Other: Special thanks to Aramus13 (who can be found at fanfiction -dot- net) for giving me the idea!
> 
> Enjoy!

* * *

So, you need twenty-seven cabbages because…?"

Lydia still wasn't sure whether to be shocked, annoyed or amused by her Thane's collection of everything ranging from food to clothes to jewels and stuff she could only consider junk. At first she had thought it was rather amusing how he hoarded everything from food to gems and everything in-between. Then it had started to become annoying. After all, the stuff took up tremendously much space, and the food didn't exactly stay fresh for very long either. The shock had hit her when she had realized exactly how  _much_  stuff it was, and that the number was still growing rapidly.

Originally she had thought he would sell the majority of it, considering the fact that it was such a tremendous amount of items, and that the food would eventually spoil. However, it seemed like she had been in the wrong, and that he somehow intended to keep it all.

Apparently, somehow he didn't realize having so many things would cause a serious problem actually living in the house. Lydia was shocked he didn't care that his house was so full of things it was hard to just move around.

Regardless of his lack of care when it came to his living conditions, Lydia knew it was a problem, a  _serious_  one.

She could barely make it in the front door without tripping over or stepping on something she wasn't supposed to, Akatosh have mercy on the ones who tried to make it  _further._  She warily looked over to the stairs she had almost stumbled down earlier that morning, and immediately decided upon looking over all the weaponry and various other sharp objects that if Maximus didn't agree to sell or get rid of most of this stuff, she would spend the next few nights in the tavern where she wasn't in immediate danger of stumbling and getting impaled in the early hours of the morning when she wasn't fully awake and aware of her surroundings.

Something  _really_  needed to be done here, and fast.  _Preferably,_  she thought,  _before there's an accident and someone dies._ She wasn't even really sure she'd notice if someone did, as the horrid smell of rotting food and the sheer  _mass_  of items could easily hide a body until the stuff was thrown out.

She was hit by a sudden attack of brief paranoia, thinking that the smell was actually coming from a decaying body and not from the rotting food. The rational part of her mind quickly supplied her with the very helpful reminder that there had been no other people in the house that she hadn't personally seen out, successfully calming her considerably.

"I need lots of cabbages because I'm going to make lots of cabbage soup." Her Thane's voice was monotone, as if he'd said this a hundred times before. "Seriously Lydia, how many times do I have to justify my cabbage collection to you?" Lydia knew he wasn't really frustrated with her even if his voice carried a (false) frustrated edge. She knew that if he really was frustrated with her he would have turned to face her, but as it was he just continued to build on his giant tower of  _apples_  he had been building on for what Lydia thought was at least a few hours. Only the gods could know why.

The tower-building action saved him from the full force of Lydia's flat stare which stabbed him hotly in the back. Not that he seemed to notice. If he did, which the Housecarl was almost sure of, he didn't pay it any mind. "…You don't eat cabbage soup. You don't eat cabbages, period." She moved closer to the table he was currently standing on, and he in turn momentarily stopped to build on his indoor tower of apples. In Lydia's personal opinion, the apple-tower had reached worrying heights, towering over them both and almost touched the roof at this point.

"In fact," She continued in a reprimanding tone, "I can remember that time last month in that horribly rainy forest when we were almost out of food, and you chose to eat  _raw meat_  instead of the cabbage soup I was making." At the end she gave him a hard poke in the midsection, making him wince and almost stumble into his towering tower of fruit.

The Imperial sent her an annoyed glare, but it didn't really have all that much heat behind it. He absentmindedly rubbed the spot where she had poked him. "Yeah, so? It wasn't  _that_  big of a deal." He jumped down from the table before she could get the idea to give him another, too hard, in his opinion, poke, which very well could have succeeded in making him stumble into his  _great_  tower of apples.

Lydia couldn't help but skeptically raise an eyebrow at his words. "The healer said you got  _worms_."

"I got cured," He mumbled defensively, rubbing his neck. "She cured me, remember?"

"Yes," she drawled. "That is, after  _I_  had to drag your sick-as-a-dog Imperial butt there to get healed.  _You,_  on the other hand," Here her voice took on an annoyed edge, "still claimed that you could just wait it out after three whole horrible weeks of that decidedly  _not_  working." Lydia couldn't help but roll her eyes frustrated at the memory of the stubborn Imperial. "Seriously though, you need to take better care of yourself. When you feel nausea, are fatigued and don't have an appetite for several days…Seriously, how serious do the symptoms need to be before you go voluntarily, exactly?" Lydia couldn't help but shook her head at him. "How you even survived to adulthood without me is a mystery."

She had expected it, so she wasn't really surprised when he immediately defended himself. "Hey!" He growled indignantly, "That's not fair! I'm perfectly capable of looking after myself Thank-you-very-much, you're just being overprotective. Besides," he muttered, "it's not my fault we were out of food."

Lydia merely stared disbelievingly at him. "Riiight. I forgot. It's you who always makes sure to bring lots of food and never insists we'll find enough game to hunt and live off in the wilderness. Thanks, I had completely forgotten about that fact." Her words practically drowned in sarcasm, making it virtually impossible to mistake them for anything but.

Lydia was aware that her Thane's had muttered some defensive words, but she paid them no mind. "So," She started, intent on winning and ending the argument once and for all, "Are you going to admit you did something stupid now? After all, you  _could_  have eaten the cabbage soup, you know. Nobody forced you to eat that raw meat, which you  _somehow_ , and gods know why, thought you could eat with no consequences to your health."

A staring match ensured. They both knew she was right, but reluctance to admitting that kept Maximus silent. He glared. Lydia raised an eyebrow.

In the end, he gave in first. "Okay, okay." He relented under her unforgiving stare. "It was a bad idea, a stupid idea. Horribly so. You happy now?" The last part dripped heavily with sarcasm.

Lydia's words on the other hand, dripped with self-satisfied smugness. "Very, thanks."

Another staring match ensured. This one was much briefer though, and in the end, Lydia's smugness won over her Thane's sulking. With a huff, the Imperial turned from her and climbed up on the table again, clearly intent on continuing to work on his towering stack of apples.

Lydia cast a glance at the nearly thirty cabbages she had seen and counted earlier, some which, to her dismay, were starting to rot.

She shook her head again.  _Right, the cabbages. Why…_  Her train of though was cut short and she froze up at the sudden realization. Maximus had  _masterfully_  evaded the subject and left her feeling victorious, knowing it would throw her of track without her knowledge.

She narrowed her eyes at his shirt-clad back, and noticed that the sulky air she could have sworn he had radiated earlier had been replaced with a smugger, triumphant one.

 _Well played, my Thane. Well played._  She couldn't help but grin smugly.  _Though you'll soon learn I'm a quick learner and not so easily fooled._

Pretending to be none the wiser, she threw him a quick goodbye as she exited Breezehome, fully intending to rent herself a room at The Bannered Mare for the oncoming days.

Of course, Lydia still fully intended to get the house cleaned up and back into a condition where she wouldn't worry about her or her Thane's impending doom by just being there, but there was  _no way_  she was going to live there until it happened.

Until then, she would stay at the inn, happily paying for it with her Thane's money.


End file.
